Working Group on Global Interfaith Spirituality and Science Reconceptualization
Our purpose is to identify, define, analyse and reconceptualise the concepts around which world faiths divide. And to propose how a synthesis between spirituality and science might lead to greater harmony between faiths, and encourage them to work on common projects (eg solving COVID 19 Pandemic, Solving Global Warming, Solving the Global Pandemic of Extremism, Populism, Violence and Ignorance; Bridging the global communication gap between experts and rank and fil e in both scientific and religious discourse) etc. Our goal is also to foster global debate on related issues.
The working group will consist initially of: Dr Ian Fry (Australia), Dr. Thomas Daffern (Europe) and Marko Hren (Slovenia) All three currently sit on the Global Board of the World Intellectual Forum.
Issues paper on Evolution of Spirituality Conceptualisation
Being aware of the need to rethink the understanding of the terms »spirituality« and »religion« and agreeing that unbundling of concepts around both terms is a precondition for future evolution of spirituality,
acknowledging the debris left by the colonial era and by all faces of imperialism, on all aspects of the present civilisation globally,
referring to the concept of sustainable development, underlying, that production, consumption, ethics and spirituality concepts need to be connected again in an indivisible manner, since spirituality and development are indivisible,
recalling the memory of ancient schools of mysteries worldwide, that survived colonial era and continuously treasured the genuine link between human behaviour, nature and all aspects of life,
We, as the World Intellectual Forum, launch the debate offering a structure of issues to be dealt with in relation to the new conceptualisation of spirituality, the revitalisation of the link between spirituality, science, production (link to the pending Industry 4.0. concept) and governance, bringing affront the potential role of ancient schools of wisdom/mysteries in contemporary sustainable development approaches. Intellectuals in diverse fields of expertise are warmly invited to contribute to the debate on the subjects raised. The World Intellectuals Forum is committed to launch and facilitate the reflection on the evolution of spirituality concepts. Please do not hesitate to send your papers related to the issue to [email protected] . Then we will come back to you with a revised issues paper. The issues paper (1st draft in a format of three clusters of issues) :
Decolonisation of spirituality reflection is key! New Generation of Ethics and Values Systems at the eve of Colonial Era must be liberated from colonial thinking debris and must stretch to the roots of plural, diversified worldwide spirituality concepts, which were place-based, nature centred and driven by introspective practices. The objectives of the Decolonisation of spirituality is to prevent the further pandemic progress of predatory imperialistic colonial culture and to reverse the trend introducing sustainable nature centred ethics that goes beyond-anthropocentrism
Decolonisation of governance: The renewal of national and multilateral governance systems must be built around the intellectual pillars deriving from traditional schools of wisdom. Decolonisation of governance involve the unbundling of financial powers (world banking and loans system and world trade mechanisms) from the governance systems, and introduction of complementary robust resilience measures to the prevailing power of militarised nation-states.
Spiritualisation and decolonisation of digital: We need to rethink the future role of digital technologies particularly Internet of everything and artificial intelligence in view of its potential to top-up to existing culture of lies, fake news, ignorance and injustice, or on the other hand, to substantially contribute to the new culture of truth, empathy, compassion and pro-active global solidarity. Decolonising digital means to prevent centralisation and monopoly of digital power holders. Spiritualisation of digital mean a strong and omnipresent effort to introduce ethics to all aspects of production and use of digital content.
Cluster I: New Generation of Ethics and Values Systems at the eve of Colonial Era – decolonisation of everything starts with the decolonisation of spirituality.
Human being is - in spiritual sense - regressing or stagnating, not advancing. The issue is to enhance the reversal of the negative trend by bringing the issue of spirituality conceptualisation evolution on the top of the intellectuals agenda.
Long lasting Colonial age and imperialisms, backed also by individual spirituality concepts and institutions enabled wild evolution of predators culture which is manifested today while we face planetary boundaries, extinction of biodiversity, climate change, mass violations of human rights and step down in democratic standards.
Spirituality reconceptualisation is an indivisible part of the de-colonialization process; spirituality is understood here in a sense of genuine, authentic, cultural genome driven ability of humans to expand their consciousness. Nature centered spirituality can only derive from and be based on traditional schools of mysteries, since those originated the linguistic baseline that is still today embedded in local languages and toponyms. The evolution of spirituality is only possible if it gravitates around and refers to the roots - the ancient schools of wisdom/mysteries.
What are the spirituality building blocks that can pave the ground to the final phasing-out of colonial, predators culture? How shall the re-Valorisation of ancient spirituality concepts be structured and managed on global level (i.e. Vedas, ancient schools of mysteries, Gnostics etc.) to assure the proper placement of ancient knowledge and knowledge holders in the evolved contemporary spirituality conceptualisation?
Do we agree that ancient schools of wisdom can be promoted as Sustainable development ethics systems, since those are normally addressing local self sufficiency, restrain and trans-generational resource management sustainable approach?
How to increase the visibility and attention of populations in regards to ancient knowledge?
How much can The debris of colonial age spirituality concepts hinder the evolution of spirituality? Does it make sense, or, is it at all necessary, to invest an effort to decode some of the key erroneous and harming elements (conceptual building blocks) of the colonial spirituality legacy (debris).
Cluster II. Decolonising governance; The renewal of national and multilateral governance systems
The present multilateral governance system was established at the peak of Colonial Era and at the peak of predatory Industrialisation. The intellectual parents of multilateral governance system thought it as a means for peace and justice while the implementation was carried down on the wings of the logic of capitalism , militarisation (of sovereign states) and imperialistic domination. These attributes are reflected in the nature of multilateral system, including the systems associated to World Trade, World Banking and consequently, the UN.
Since a major part of the planet has been colonised (in cultural, political and spiritual sense), the task of identification of trustworthy stakeholders is even more difficult and demands for establishing of regional external task forces to monitor processes and assure for impartiality and full participatory nature of the process, while the processes themselves shall be fully entrusted to local/regional/national stakeholders. The identification of authentic carriers of ancient knowledge as well as of traditional community leadership is an issue by itself. It must be dealt with acknowledging regional specifics (place – based approach) and heterogeneity.
How to restructure the planetary and regional governance (multilateral and national) systems to integrate the carriers of ancient wisdom (nature-centered faith elders and genuine community leaders) in such a way that their voice will not only be heard and respected, but placed in governance systems in an adequate manner and translated into policies (policy design and executive governance).
Humanity is under pressure in terms of time. On the other hand any intervention, not fully premeditated, would not contribute to the change of paradigm. Can the robust changes in spirituality approach meet the time challenge? Can Spirituality evolution be promoted as a shortcut to revolutionise the governance system?
Cluster III. Structuring the role of digital technologies in both above baskets of issues
Humanity is faced with the fact that Digital age is a reality – technologies are influencing spirituality and governance systems as much as any other human activity. Digitalisation has an unpreceded impact on the availability of the sources of knowledge! How do we perceive and think the digital technologies, including Artificial intelligence applications, in relation to new generation of spirituality conceptualisation?
How do the digital technologies affect the Change of perception of Here&Now?
Can we see digital technologies as an opportunity to foster Spirituality evolution?
Referring to the Sustainable development: does it make sense to address issues of production (pending Industry 4.0), economy, environment, social welfare (emerging concept of Society 5.0) and spirituality as indivisibly interconnected issues?
How shall the risks of digital technologies be approached in view of its potential to top-up to existing culture of lies, fake news, ignorance and injustice, or on the other hand, to substantially contribute to the new culture of truth, empathy, compassion and pro-active global solidarity.
Complementary sites and papers: Issues paper elaboration with a case study of Slovenia, by Marko Hren can be downloaded here: https://independent.academia.edu/markohren Internet Sacred Texts archive – with systematic clustering of sacred texts from all traditions is available here https://www.sacred-texts.com/ Thomas Dafferns’ Periodic Table of the World Religious and Philosophical Traditions is presented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN0mIgZFkOs
The book which accompanies the Table is available here: https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/thomas-daffern/the-periodic-table-of-the-worlds-religious-and-philosophical-traditions/paperback/product-14nnvzvz.html
As part of the debate towards reconceptualising spirituality and religions in the light of science, a new work on the mathematics of religions is presented here:
PHILOSOPHIÆ RELIGIONIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA: A TREATISE ON THE OVERLAPPING KNOWLEDGE FIELDS OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND MATHEMATICS by Dr. Thomas Clough Daffern
Imagine two overlapping Venn diagrams. In one circle you have the entire field known as religious studies: this includes all the innumerable fields of work that have been developed over the last 150 years or so. The field is in fact relatively new. It includes the study of the phenomenon of religions worldwide. religious demography, geography of religions, sacred sites, pilgrimages, diet and religious, sexuality and religions, esoteric practise and rituals, ceremonies, liturgy prayer, meditation, contemplation, out of body experiences (willed or spontaneous), rituals and teachings around death; theories of reincarnation and resurrection; the study of sacred texts and religious literature, etc. Now consider another Venn diagram circle which com[prises the entire field of mathematical studies, including every subranch of maths. Now overlap the two circles: in the intersection, you have the contents of this book: Religious Mathematics.
Dr. Ian Fry’s proposal regarding a formation of a Global Council on Religion, Culture and the Human Future (GCRCH), independent of religious institutions, governments and political organizations, to initiate and support ongoing programs of research and the study of all matters of religion and culture that have, or might have, a bearing on the future of humanity. https://religionsforpeaceaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Fry-2016-DICID-The-way-forward-A-Global-Council-post-conference-v2-colour-charts.pdf UNESCO has released its Preliminary Report on the first draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Member states are called to respond by the end of the year (December 31st, 2020).
The Report is addressing a set of issues that WIF discussed under the Issues paper on evolution of spirituality, namely, the relation of large-scale introduction of AI, ethics and sustainable development.
Our debate on the Issues paper was therefore phased in time very well and we can make a contrubuti9on to the current inter-governmental debate on ethics and AI.
Among issues which we at the World Intellectual Forum should be particularly interested are: * The increasing use of the internet with machine readable monitoring for nefarious espionage and surveillance capitalism * The increasing use of AI for information warfare, political gerrymandering, democratic interferences with electoral processes * The increasing use of drones and high tech AI warfighting equipments (militarised robots etc.) which endanger humanity * the need for global ethical constrains to be put on the AI industry especially; as it overlaps with conflict creation, destabalisation and political interference, against the charter and principles of the United Nations itself * the misuse of AI for nationalist propaganda and international hate speech directed against other countries, or groups of simply because they share different moral or spiritual outlooks on life * the weaponsiation of social media and increasingly sophisticated tools of data mining for political purposes such as pursued by Cambridge Analytica to gerrymander Brexit and the Trump election victory in 2016, as revealed by whistle-blower Chris Wylie
We must therefore remind UNESCO of its commitment to a Culture of Peace for humanity, and that whilst we welcome AI in view of its potential benefits for mankind, for our solving ecological, social and medial difficulties, we are also aware that AI can be used by dark and sinister military forces, including a whole swathe of shadowy special ops mercenaries who are now waging wars from the shadow of their underground bunkers, with very little democratic oversight.
As the WIF therefore we are calling for an absolute halt to the militarisation of AI, and for strict ethical and spiritual oversight of these technologies as they come on stream, and that they should be for the benefit of all societies and not for the destructive hegemony of the military-intelligence-corporate elites that are seeking to use them to embed their stranglehold on humanity even further.
Furthermore, WIF is calling for a universal 95% reduction of military spending worldwide and a conversion of all the money saved to peaceful uses. This would have to be implemented by universal agreement in Russia, China, USA, Europe, and other countries at the same time, by sworn treaty.
We are also calling on all faith leaders, both spiritual and religions and intellectual, to get behind the peace plan of the WIF by signing up to the INTERFAITH PEACE TREATY here: https://interfaithpeacetreaty.wordpress.com/
